Get 'er done

With apologies to Larry the Cable Guy, here is short list of stuff that just needs to get done.They have some things in common. They all have massive popular support, are just good common sense and would provide multiple benefits to the country. The other things they have in common are what keep them from being done: bull-headed bipartisan politics, bureaucratic inefficiency and lack of will.

Infrastructure - You have only to travel even casually in this country to know that it is falling apart. We have unsafe bridges, our roads are more pothole than road, our water, sewer, gas and electrical (been through a storm recently?) lines are substandard, and our airports are embarrassing (James Fallows described flying from Tokyo to NY like going "from the Jetsons to the Flintstones") but not as bad as our railways, which are just a joke. And how can we do anything about education if our physical schools are unusable. There are some scary studies out there, and I am not in any way claiming this is easy, but here is one quote from an expert: "The big picture is that we invested massively 50 years ago and more or less haven't done anything of comparable magnitude since." We buy new cars every five years but don't work on the roads in fifty. The part of this one that also sticks out is that it would provide countless jobs that cannot be sent overseas.

Veterans benefits - There are veterans dying while waiting for benefits. Lots of them. And even if they aren't dying they are waiting months and months to get what they have been promised. We call our vets heroes - and they are - but waving flags and holding parades (while nice, but not done nearly enough) are not what these people need. How can we possibly be okay with asking them to go to war and not take care of them when they come home? One of the horrible ironies of this issue is that because we are so much better at saving lives on the battlefield - a good thing - we now have more vets with catastrophic injuries needing care. And they, and their families - are waiting months to get it. That strikes me as being sad and wrong at best, probably immoral and certainly unforgivable.

Education - There is an argument that says the vast majority of our current problems stem from our growing ignorance. And I couldn't agree more. We fall behind more and more every year in every possible measure of the effectiveness of our educational system. And what could possibly be more important? We cannot be expected to act with reason if we do not have enough education to understand what is reasonable. One of the reasons we are so good at voting against our own best interests is that we are incapable of recognizing those interests. In another painful irony, we are in the great information age - you have an incomprehensible amount of information at your fingertips - but are getting dumber because we are no longer being taught to think. That's what school is for, and our schools are failing. Not because of our teachers, but they, like our vets, are considered heroes but treated like second-hand citizens. And it should be exactly the opposite. Lee Iacocca, randomly enough, said it well: "In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization from one generation to the next ought to be the highest responsibility anyone could have". But how will we get to the completely rational society?

Same sex marriage - More Americans support this than oppose it, and the people who oppose it tend to be old white guys. Honest. At what point do we stop being irrational and start being, just a little, progressive? Gasp! If a great number of young, educated people among a broad cross-section of America think it is okay, when do they get to push forward the thinking of the small, narrowly-based group that is clinging to an out-of-date and ignorant paradigm? The part about this that I really don't get is how same sex marriage - as some opponents claim - undermines "traditional" marriage. A gay couple being wed has nothing to do with my marriage. If it did I wouldn't want anyone to get married because too many marriages make mine less special. Besides, any institution that fails half the time has no high ground on which to stand and make judgments. And check this out. States that allow same-sex marriage have lower divorce rates than those that don't. I'm pretty sure that is the opposite of undermining.

Gun control - I have gone on at length in other posts about this issue, so do not want to repeat myself. Look my gun control posts for more ranting on the subject than you probably want. But this issue's time has come, it actually came long ago, but now that is seems to at long last have some real traction, we cannot let it slip away again. Please remember that the second amendment has nothing to do with this, even NRA members support much of what is proposed, no one is coming to take away anyone's guns and that the idea that any of us are safer with more guns is just nothing but dumb. But if you remember anything, please, please remember that in the eleven weeks since Sandy Hook almost 2,300 people have died by guns.

We need to exert our national will, if there still is one, to make these things happen. it is time to insist upon it.